Today's Tuesday - that means weekly outage. Outside of the normal database backup/compression drill I went through the rigamarole of changing the user id of mysql on the master database server (and updated the ownership of all its files), if only for administrative ease now that it matches the same user id as all other instances of mysql here in our group.

I also decided to yum up several servers that were lagging behind since we have been getting ugly yet harmless kernel warning messages for a while now. Unfortunately, this general update included a buggy nfs package (which I knew was buggy months ago but assumed they must have fixed this by now) which then locked up one of our main file servers, thus grinding everything to a halt. It was an annoying hour or so trying to figure this all out, and ultimately the only solution was to fall back to an old version of nfs. Not sure why this nfs-utils package is *still* in the repositories.

Josh is working on getting another astropulse client out into the world today, and is fighting with the code signing machine as I type this sentence.

Here's another problem we've been having over the past couple weeks, and it doesn't seem to be getting better: ants. I typically don't take a lunch break, and just nosh all day by my computer during small cracks of time. Dave and Jeff are the same way, and have the next two desks adjacent to me. Even though we're on the third floor the ants finally found the motherload of crumbs and unwashed utensils left on our desktops. There's not enough of them to find their exact point of entry nor plot their general plan of action. So throughout the day I've been mashing the little buggers as I spot them. Hopefully they'll just give up and disappear - meanwhile my work space is smelling more and more like formic acid.

- Matt-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Are you sure they're ants? Perhaps they're intelligent machines from another planet who have come to investigate our primitive SETI technologies. Rather than crunching data looking for radio signals, you may be literally crunching the real thing!

Josh is working on getting another astropulse client out into the world today, and is fighting with the code signing machine as I type this sentence.

I see the AP splitters running (ok, at least two of them). Are the AP WUs the same (meaning that the new Astropulse standard client and the existing AP Optimized v5.0r103 client will both work)? If not, will BOINC be set to only download to the WUs to the new AP client until newer AP optimized versions are built...or would we have to unselect the AP option in our Seti preferences?

Josh is working on getting another astropulse client out into the world today, and is fighting with the code signing machine as I type this sentence.

I see the AP splitters running (ok, at least two of them). Are the AP WUs the same (meaning that the new Astropulse standard client and the existing AP Optimized v5.0r103 client will both work)? If not, will BOINC be set to only download to the WUs to the new AP client until newer AP optimized versions are built...or would we have to unselect the AP option in our Seti preferences?

The plan is to release a new Astropulse application later today, under a new Astropulse name ('Astropulse v5' is showing on the Applications page). This will keep it completely separate from the v5.00 we've been running since November, and avoid the confusion over the transition from v4.36 to v5.00

The net effect is that users of optimised AP applications will continue to receive a trickle of re-sent work from the old v5.00 run (there are, after all, 114,351 results still out in the field), but they will not receive any new work from the new 'Astropulse v5' application (sorry about the confusing terminology, we didn't invent it).

Lunatics has new optimised code equivalent to the application expected to be released today, but it will need compiling to match the final released application, and testing to make sure no finger-fumbles have crept into the final build. Expect a new release in maybe a couple of days, depending how well things go.

In the meantime, please do not attempt to use any existing application to crunch the new work. They are not compatible, they will not validate, and you will get zero credit.

Will we be able to do both the old and new AP at the same time once the new opp app is released? Or will we have to choose one or the other?

Someone will have to clean up the old ones.

Yes, it will be easier to keep an old app running (or available just in case) to mop up the remnants of the old run, while directing new work to the new application. This is a better solution than the v4.36/v5.00 transition, when we had problems with the validator failing to accept work processed with different applications.

Is the new AP app to be released here or at Beta.
Since the start of testing of v5.01 on Beta there have been several items of interest.
1, V5.01 takes ages to process, 3 * longer that V5.00, >100 hrs on core2, so not sure that enough results have validated yet to say it is releasable.
2, Josh was talking to the Lunatics crew about optimisation. Is there going to be any generic optimisation included? If so it needs to be tested.
3, Matt said in Desolation "Just found another potential problem with the radar blanking code. Sigh..." If this is new radar blanker used in AP then this has not been tested.

And there are other items that need fixing like the DCF so that is approx same as MB.

Perhaps you should revisit Richard Feyman's approach to dealing with the ant problems... ala greese pencils, scent trails, and creating "ant ferries" with card stock... for more information on his ant-ics (sorry, couldn't resist) you could re-read "surely your joking Mr. Feyman". Actually, he made some interesting points about nature of group intelligence among a population of apparently randomly, non-intellegent individuals... I'm sure he was talking about ants... wasn't he? *grin*

as for the outage (I am a newbie with only 9k credits or so) why are there no new tasks today??? is that what the weekly "outage" is in reference to?

Josh is working on getting another astropulse client out into the world today, and is fighting with the code signing machine as I type this sentence.

I see the AP splitters running (ok, at least two of them). Are the AP WUs the same (meaning that the new Astropulse standard client and the existing AP Optimized v5.0r103 client will both work)? If not, will BOINC be set to only download to the WUs to the new AP client until newer AP optimized versions are built...or would we have to unselect the AP option in our Seti preferences?

The plan is to release a new Astropulse application later today, under a new Astropulse name ('Astropulse v5' is showing on the Applications page). This will keep it completely separate from the v5.00 we've been running since November, and avoid the confusion over the transition from v4.36 to v5.00

The net effect is that users of optimised AP applications will continue to receive a trickle of re-sent work from the old v5.00 run (there are, after all, 114,351 results still out in the field), but they will not receive any new work from the new 'Astropulse v5' application (sorry about the confusing terminology, we didn't invent it).

Lunatics has new optimised code equivalent to the application expected to be released today, but it will need compiling to match the final released application, and testing to make sure no finger-fumbles have crept into the final build. Expect a new release in maybe a couple of days, depending how well things go.

In the meantime, please do not attempt to use any existing application to crunch the new work. They are not compatible, they will not validate, and you will get zero credit.

On the Accounts 'SETI@home preferences page', will there be a 3rd option to select (Astropulse v5) in the "Run only the selected applications" section?

Perhaps you should revisit Richard Feyman's approach to dealing with the ant problems... ala greese pencils, scent trails, and creating "ant ferries" with card stock... for more information on his ant-ics (sorry, couldn't resist) you could re-read "surely your joking Mr. Feyman". Actually, he made some interesting points about nature of group intelligence among a population of apparently randomly, non-intellegent individuals... I'm sure he was talking about ants... wasn't he? *grin*

as for the outage (I am a newbie with only 9k credits or so) why are there no new tasks today??? is that what the weekly "outage" is in reference to?

The staff closes the doors on Tuesdays (during the day at Berkeley), put their sterile gowns on, grabs some surgical tools to fix or repair anything that might need triage, installs new hardware, etc. Usually this means the gargantuan database is backed-up, compressed, and otherwise soothed so that it will make another week without hiccups.

On the Accounts 'SETI@home preferences page', will there be a 3rd option to select (Astropulse v5) in the "Run only the selected applications" section?

I doubt that there will be a third option - the intention would be that the older-style plain 'Astropulse' work would run down to zero as quickly as possible, and the new 'Astropulse v5' would become the only AP show in town.

But you are right to remind them that the existing checkbox needs to be hooked up to the new application.

On the Accounts 'SETI@home preferences page', will there be a 3rd option to select (Astropulse v5) in the "Run only the selected applications" section?

I doubt that there will be a third option - the intention would be that the older-style plain 'Astropulse' work would run down to zero as quickly as possible, and the new 'Astropulse v5' would become the only AP show in town.

But you are right to remind them that the existing checkbox needs to be hooked up to the new application.

That's fine. Astropulse is currently selected in my Seti@home profile, so I want to make sure I do not get any of the NEW AP units, so they don't get crunched by the existing AP v5.0 application. As long as Seti/BOINC can keep them straight, I will not worry about it.

Given the number of existing AP units out in the field, it could be a while before the original 5.0 AP units are bled out...

I want to make sure I do not get any of the NEW AP units, so they don't get crunched by the existing AP v5.0 application. As long as Seti/BOINC can keep them straight, I will not worry about it.

You should be safe there. If your AP v5.00 application was supplied automatically by Berkeley, you will automatically download a new application alongside your first allocation of new work: if you installed your own AP v5.00 along with an app_info.xml file, that will block the allocation of new-format work until you update your application(s) yourself.